Jesus left his lofty place to rescue glory thieves who insert themselves into his place and make it all about them.
In 2 Corinthians 5:15, Paul is quite clear about the reason for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He says, “And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” No human being has ever successfully escaped the draw of sin that Paul points to here. Sin draws us away from God’s glory toward our glory. Sin pulls us away from God’s kingdom and produces in us an obsessive allegiance to our little kingdom of one. Sin makes us less concerned about what God wants and more concerned about what we want. Sin causes us to be more excited about our personal plans than we are about the things that God has planned for us. Sin makes us more focused on our feelings than we are about God’s will.
Here’s what sin does. It causes each of us to place ourselves in the center of our worlds and make life all about us. So we always feel the need to be in control. We hate it if we’re not healthy. We want to be affluent and surrounded by beautiful possessions. We can’t cope if we’re not surrounded by people who like and respect us. We want life to be predictable and easy. We don’t want obstacles in our way or suffering of any kind in our path. So because we can’t control any of these things, we’re perennially unhappy with life, and sadly, often with God.
You see, our problem is not just that we live in a broken world and that its brokenness enters our doors; beneath that reality is a much deeper problem. We have a glory problem. We have preferred living for ourselves over living for something and someone bigger than ourselves. In our marriages, in our parenting, in our work, in our friendships, and in the church, we have made life all about us. We have tended to reduce the active field of our concern down to the tiny confines of our wants, our needs, our plans, our satisfaction, and our happiness. It’s not wrong to want some control, or to want to be right, or to like beautiful possessions, or to be surrounded by a community of love, but it’s wrong and spiritually dangerous for those things to rule your heart.
Let me give you an example by asking a rather intrusive question. How much of your anger in the last two months had anything whatsoever to do with God’s call, his kingdom, and his glory? You see, if we’re honest, we’re not angry because the people around us are breaking God’s law; we are angry because they’re breaking our law. They get in the way of what we want or what we think we need. Perhaps, at street level, we’re not living for the glory of God at all. Perhaps in ways we’re not conscious of, we have shrunk life down to the size of our own glory. Maybe it really is true that somehow, someway, sin makes us all glory thieves. We steal for ourselves what belongs to God. We put ourselves in God’s place. Perhaps life really is one big unending glory battle. It’s because we would never, ever win this battle on our own that Jesus came.
This is where we are confronted and comforted by the glorious goodness of God and the radical humility of Jesus. Our God of infinite glory looked on glory thieves not with jealous derision but with redeeming love. And because he did, he commissioned his Son to leave his rightful glory position to become a servant even to death, so that you and I could be liberated from the prison of self-glory that is the doom of every sinner. Not only that, but the saving work of Jesus unleashes God’s glory onto us. As his children we are showered with the glory of his forgiveness, the glory of his love, the glory of his wisdom, the glory of his power, the glory of his mercy, the glory of his sovereign rule, the glory of his promises, and the glory of his presence. And the showering of glory on us progressively turns our hearts away from our individualistic commitment to our own glory to once again live for the thing for which we were created: the glory of God.
Here is the movement of the Christmas story: glory forsaken (Jesus), glory liberated (our self-glory), glory restored (our living for the glory of God). The Son of Glory came to fight our glory battle so that we would be freed from our bondage to any other glory but the glory of God. May your celebration today be bigger and deeper than awesome Christmas decorations, wonderful Christmas food, and cool Christmas gifts. May you glory in the real glory of this season. May you celebrate your glory-liberation while you recognize your need for further freedom, and may you remember your Savior. His humiliation is your liberation. And may you always be blown away by the stunning catalog of glories that have been showered down on you because of the amazing goodness of God and the humble willingness of Jesus.
For further study: Philippians 3:12–20
For parents and children:
Central theme: Thieves
Ask you children what they would do if someone stole something very valuable from them. Ask them if they ever took something that didn’t belong to them. Then help them to understand that we’re all thieves because there is something very valuable that we all steal from God—his glory. Then help them to understand that Jesus was born not to condemn thieves but to forgive them.